The OSM concert, resumed this Saturday at 2:30 p.m., is directed by the African-American conductor Roderick Cox, whom we met a few years ago in Lanaudière at the head of the Métropolitain. His performance, at the head of a generous OSM, confirms in every way the excellent memory left by this elegant and determined conductor.
The great subject of curiosity was obviously to see to what extent an African-American conductor directed the founding symphony of what should have been, according to certain specialists, the root of an authentically American musical tradition (see on this subject our article “Yannick Nézet-Séguin at the roots of American music”, of September 23) would attract a new audience to the Maison symphonique and the OSM.
Parsimonious
In our interview last Saturday with Allison Migeon, co-founder of Ensemble Obiora, who will give the inaugural concert of its first season on Saturday, we looked at the following question: if we have people from diverse backgrounds on stage cultural, will we have another audience in the room? Allison Migeon pointed out that the Maison symphonique or the OSM could intimidate people who did not dare to go to the concert.
The leverage of having an African-American conductor conducting the largest African-American symphony by the best orchestra in Canada is clearly not enough to attract another audience and it attracts less than the “mainstream” repertoire. What we lose on one side is not compensated by a parsimonious gain on the other. This is an observation that we were able to make with the feminization and the frenzied diversification of OM’s programming in 2022/23.
In the case of this week it’s a shame, because those who had dared (there were some around us for whom it was obviously a first experience) were captivated. Our neighbors noted after the concert: “You must have seen this at the at least once in your life! »
Impressive vision
Roderick Cox immediately made a strong impression with a Storm by Tchaikovsky very well maintained, implacable and firm, grandiose but not grandiloquent, with dynamic dosages and well-controlled gradations. The chef was served by an OSM rich in sound, whose current form we know.
There is a great renewed attention to the Negro Folk Symphony by William Levi Dawson. It was recorded beautifully by Kellen Gray and the Scottish National Orchestra at Linn in 2022 in the first volume of a series “ African American Voices “. It is certain that Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s recording in Philadelphia at DG will do a lot to popularize it. But under Cox’s baton it was something entirely different in terms of expressiveness and eloquence, notably at two moments in the work which can express yoke or oppression: the fortissimos two thirds of the first movement, sometimes bordering on savagery, and the most impressive and innovative passage on an interpretative level, the last 3 minutes of the 2nd movement “ Hope in the Night » with very large dynamic bellows which give a powerful mystery to the forces of the night.
Cox was also a very lively accompanist of the Violin Concerto by Barber, a concerto whose most memorable soloist was the oboist stating the beginning of the 2nd movement. Not that Blake Pouliot was unworthy. He played virtuoso and fair. The problem is that the last two interpretations of the Concerto of Barber that we remember here are signed Kerson Leong and Gil Shaham.
You have to read in black and white in the biography that Pouliot plays a Guarneri del Gesu to believe it. In the first movement the sound is quite banal, lacking high harmonics. It will take on a little body afterwards but no foundation and real “grip” on the rope. ground. On this level, that of sound density and expressive intensity (that of stage performance too), Pouliot is far behind Kerson Leong, the latter now appearing as the real successor to James Ehnes in the country.
This “pretty” Barber, very competent, but immediately played immediately forgotten, therefore lacked magic and sound substance, a bit like Daniel Lozakovich in the 2nd Concerto from Prokofiev to OM.
Certainly. this concert, we’re going for the leader. Anyway, he’s also what makes Barber exciting.